Decatur is moving to the cloud! Our software applications will now be on servers at a secure offsite data center (rather than on computers at City Hall), and employees will access their information in the cloud through “thin clients” instead of traditional desktop computers.
We are moving department by department starting with Children & Youth Services in early January with others being phased in over the next two months.
The change enables employees to work from multiple locations, ensures data can be recovered more easily and quickly in the event of a disaster, and reduces the recurring costs of hardware replacement. Plus, there will be quicker software deployments and reduced energy consumption.
We expect internal kinks and bugs at first, but the transition should not interrupt any of the external technology services we provide to the community. Decatur WiFi, the City website, and services such as online job applications, online service requests (CRM), online tax information, online citation payments, registration for recreation and after-school programs, Open City Hall, streaming video of City Commission meetings, and GIS mapping should continue to function normally during the transition.
There are legal requirements for how public safety records should be maintained so for now, the police department will not join us in the cloud. However, the ultimate plan is to move them as well. We’ll keep you posted.
I think the decision was not researched enough; its a bad idea to put everything on the web (external cloud) especially detailed personal information. I think the cloud is great, we operate one internally, we also have some services hosted externally on a public cloud but they do not pose a tread to our organization, our clients or our employees. I am a cloud specialist with 8 years of experience on the cloud and 20 years in IT. I would advice to plan test and be ready for when personal data is accessed or shared inappropriately because it’s going to happen.